Americas Defense Meltdown - IT Acquisition Advisory Council

William S. Lind • 125and aircraft carriers, which remain useful ships, cruisers and destroyers are obsolescentas warship types. In their main role, carrier escort, they add little to the carrier’s owndefenses, represented by its aircraft. They carry one or two anti-submarine helicopterseach, useful aircraft, but provided in small numbers at high expense.All current and building U.S. Navy cruisers and destroyers – 22 Ticonderoga-classcruisers, 52 Arleigh Burke class destroyers with 10 building, two “stealth” Zumwaltclassdestroyers building (at a cost of $4.2 billion – perhaps even more – for onedestroyer!) and a new class of cruisers planned – carry as their main armament theAegis air defense system. Aegis was designed to protect carrier battle groups in theNorth Atlantic from massed raids by Soviet Backfire bombers during the Cold War.As the U.S.S. Vincennes demonstrated, it has little utility in coastal waters, whereair traffic is likely to be heavy with civilian aircraft. Its capability against low-flyingaircraft and anti-ship missiles is also in doubt, as many tests have demonstrated– tests that the Navy has refused to disclose. Aegis is a classic legacy system, runningon endlessly at great expense long after the mission for which it was designeddisappeared.Reformers would mothball or transfer to the Naval Reserve all or almost all Aegisships, and build no more. Nor would they build “stealth” warships, which can easilybe detected by old fashioned long-wave radars (which can also pick up stealthaircraft). A few Aegis ships might be kept in active service for anti-ballistic missileduties if a program to give Aegis that capability proves successful. Despite severalmuch-ballyhooed “tests,” the actual capability of an Aegis ship for missile defense hasyet to be tested in anything resembling a real-world scenario, where warning timescan be short, the ship’s position is usually less than optimal, and a chance storm maybe tossing the ship around, to name just a few common difficulties.The best escort for a carrier is another carrier, with an air wing task-organizedto defend against the particular threats anticipated in the mission. Landing HelicopterAttack (LHA) and Landing Helicopter Dock (LHD) ships, which are classedas amphibious ships but are actually small aircraft carriers, could function usefullyas escort carriers. Should other escorts be required, they would best be provided byconverting merchant ships, giving them modularized weapons, sensors and aircraftmaintenance facilities. One converted merchantman could provide several times asmany anti-submarine helicopters as a cruiser or destroyer at far less cost.Amphibious ShipsAmphibious forces will be highly useful in Fourth Generation conflicts, because theycan remain based at sea even during operations ashore. That helps us keep down thesize of our “footprint” in a country where the obvious presence of U.S. troops is likelyto alienate the local population. More broadly, it is no accident that a majority of SirJulian Corbett’s historical studies were devoted to amphibious warfare. Amphibious